


Kill Order

by seimaisin



Series: i never shoot to miss [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, BDSM Scene, F/M, Femsub, Sex Club, background Zahra/Kash, not nearly as much sex as you'd think given part of it is set in a sex club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 19:47:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10860846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seimaisin/pseuds/seimaisin
Summary: Part of modern spy AU.An SIS agent has been discovered to have ties to the Chroma Conclave and has been feeding them classified information about SIS and MI5 operations. As of today, Percival de Rolo is no longer an SIS agent, and an international operation has been put together to apprehend him. If you encounter him in your travels, you have the authority to arrest him. We prefer to apprehend him alive, but if an emergency occurs, you have permission to shoot to kill.





	Kill Order

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blindvogel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blindvogel/gifts).



> This is part of a much larger AU that blindvogel and I play around with. I wrote this story for her, to entertain her, and to fill in a gap in the story we haven't written together. We're hoping to post more in this universe publicly at some point.
> 
> Though it doesn't figure a lot in this particular story, there's a general warning for a D/s relationship with femsub in this universe.

It’s rare for Vox Machina to be all together these days - ever since their safe house in Emon was compromised, they stay on the road as much as possible. (Except for Keyleth, who has been holed up with her computers in this little house in Stillben for months now. Okay, maybe “holed up” isn’t the proper term - she’s on a first-name basis with the elderly woman who lives next door, and her garden has produced some really amazing vegetables. But metaphorically speaking.) So it’s a novel feeling, to have their whole family together for once, even if it’s just for a week or so. Vex intends to enjoy it as much as she can.

Or, she does, until the moment Keyleth’s voice comes over the house intercom and shatters the morning silence. “VEX!!! Come quick!!”

Vex is already halfway down the stairs before she hears everyone else’s bedroom doors start to open. She ignores them, though, and rushes to Keyleth’s command center. “What? What’s wrong?”

Keyleth is pale, as she stares at the screens surrounding her. When she looks up at Vex, her eyes are frantic. “So, you know I’ve been hacking into the SIS internal servers for a while …”

“No, I didn’t, but it doesn’t surprise me.” But the mention of SIS puts a cold knot in Vex’s stomach. “What happened?” She won’t think of the worst case scenario - he’s not dead, he can’t be, he’s too good for that.

“Well …” Keyleth takes a deep breath. “They’ve been going through an internal reorganization, one that gave me a weird feeling, so I’ve been keeping closer track over the last month or so. It’s weird, the guy who took over the agency doesn’t have any espionage or counter-terrorism background that I can trace, and his wife is working really closely with him, despite not being an agent. But anyway … that’s not the point, or maybe it is, because one of my keywords triggered an alarm today.”

“Keyleth. Get to the point.” She can feel the rest of the team standing behind her, the usually comforting presence of her brother at her back. But right now, nothing will comfort Vex, nothing but better news than she’s expecting.

“Well …” Finally, she just points to a screen to her left. “Read it yourself.”

Vex leans over; it’s a confidential memo, or what looks like one, addressed to the whole International Counter-Terrorism team, signed by a man named Sylas Briarwood. _An SIS agent has been discovered to have ties to the Chroma Conclave and has been feeding them classified information about SIS and MI5 operations. As of today, Percival de Rolo is no longer an SIS agent, and an international operation has been put together to apprehend him. If you encounter him in your travels, you have the authority to arrest him. We prefer to apprehend him alive, but if an emergency occurs, you have permission to shoot to kill._

She stumbles backward, a hand over her mouth, and runs right into Vax, who puts an arm around her waist. “It’s not true,” she says numbly. “He has nothing to do with the Conclave. I know it!”

“I do too,” Keyleth says quietly. “He and I have been contacts online for a long time now. He’s good, but I would have found a contact with the Conclave by now if it was there to be found.”

“We believe you,” Vax says, close to Vex’s ear. “But why would his own agency issue a kill order for him?”

“I don’t know,” Vex says. “We … well, we didn’t talk that much about work, when we were together. It was easier that way.” Too many professional conflicts, too much at stake … they worked for separate organizations that may not be directly competing, but definitely had different priorities on the international scene. “But I know Percy. He’s loyal. They’re lying about him.”

“So, what do we do?” Surprisingly, the speaker is Grog. When she turns to look at him, he shrugs. “This is your guy, right? You say he’s good, he’s good. What are we gonna do about it?”

Keyleth is already typing when Vex turns back to her. “There are a few places … a couple of ways to contact him that shouldn’t be monitored by the SIS. It’ll take a little digging for me, and I don’t know if he’ll see the messages, but I’ll try.” 

Vex nods. “I’ll try the couple of ways I know to contact him, but if he’s gone underground, those will probably be long gone.” They haven’t exactly been hiding their relationship from the SIS, but as far as his government knows, she’s a grad student he met while while working with Professor Stormwind in Draconia. Thus, she uses email and a phone number to contact him that the SIS knows about. At least, she did, until now. “I should …” she starts to say.

“You should stay here until Kiki finds something,” Vax interrupts her. “I know it sucks, but you’re not going to gain anything going off half cocked. He could be anywhere in the world right now.”

“Besides,” Pike adds, putting her hand on Vex’s arm, “if they had to send that message to their people, chances are good he’s still alive and free, at least for the moment.”

_For the moment._ Those are the words that haunt Vex as she paces the house for the next two days. There’s nothing she can do that Keyleth isn’t already doing, better than Vex would be able to. But she feels like she’s wearing grooves into the floor, as Keyleth reports no news every hour - no responses to her messages, no further mention of Percy in the SIS system. “I can’t just sit here,” she tells Vax after 48 hours have passed. “I have an idea of where a couple of his bolt holes might be, I can go look, at least it will be something …”

She’s interrupted by the sound of her name being called, for the second time in two days, over the intercom. She practically jumps over the stair railing in her haste to get to Keyleth.

In the command center, Keyleth has already displayed a message on the largest screen - it appears to be gibberish to Vex. “You wanna translate that for me?” 

“Oh! Sorry, I forgot.” Keyleth starts tapping keys. “We worked out this cypher once, mostly just to see if we could use … anyway, that’s not important, but I used it to contact him just in case. And then a few minutes ago, this came back.” Suddenly, the gibberish disappears, replaced by three short phrases.

_I’m surviving. Don’t put yourself out on my account. Tell your sister that Storm says hello._

“I assume the first two sentences means he’s alive and doesn’t want us to put ourselves in danger for him, but I don’t know -”

“Ank’harel,” Vex interrupts her, relief flooding her system. “He’s in Ank’harel.”

“How do you know?” Vax asks from behind her.

“Storm.” She smiles. “Not only do I know what city he’s in, I know exactly where he is in that city.” Now she turns around, to see the rest of her team standing behind her. “And I’ll go alone.”

“Like hell,” Vax answers, predictably.

“Listen. We’ve been successful here because we stay off the radar of the big national organizations. I’d be surprised if SIS didn’t know that Ank’harel is one of the cities Percy might run to - they probably have people there, looking for him. So whoever goes in there after him will probably end up on their watch list, maybe even on the same kill order. I’m doing it - even if I didn’t …” She can’t say that, not now, not when she doesn’t know if he’ll live or die. But she pushes on. “I owe him, he compromised his own mission to get me out of Draconia when Thordak’s goons found me. But that’s no reason any of you need to blow your covers.”

They listen to her in silence. Then, without looking at anyone else, Pike just shrugs. “So when do we leave?”

“I’ll book your flights,” Keyleth says, “You’ll all travel separately, just in case.”

“I’ll find us a temporary place to crash in Ank’harel,” Scanlan says, while Grog wanders off toward the weapon room.

Vax just shakes his head at her. “He’s yours, so he’s ours. We’re all in.” She can only hug him; he holds onto her tightly for a moment before kissing her hair and saying, “We’ll get him. Let’s go.”

*  
It takes a little over a day for Vex to get to Ank’harel - she thinks Keyleth purposely booked her on one of the slower flights, just so that she wouldn’t go do anything stupid without backup. It’s annoying, but probably smart. But finally, she’s here and holed up in a shitty hotel room, getting herself ready for a trip to the Shade. “I didn’t realize we were going somewhere fancy,” Scanlan remarks when he sees her pull her clothes out of the garment bag.

“You’re not. I am. Well, fancy is relative. I just need to fit in.” With that, she shuts the bathroom door behind her. The last time she visited the Shade, she wore nothing more than gauzy silks and a bit of strategic jewelry. The silks are still in her closet at the safehouse … this is not a trip for pleasure, and she isn’t keen on walking the streets dressed that way without Percy at her side. So when she emerges, she’s wearing a draped halter top, leather pants, and the soft leather collar that she’s kept private since leaving this city the last time. Her brother and Pike have joined Scanlan; she sees Vax eye the collar, but she doesn’t offer an explanation. He likely doesn’t need one, but they’ll both be better if they pretend he doesn’t know that much about her sex life. “It’s a private club,” she says. “I’ve been there before, I can get in, but it would be hard to get any of you in without some attention on us.” 

Pike just nods. “Grog is already on the street, playing lookout near the club. The rest of us will find positions when you go in. And we all have the ear monitors, right?”

Everyone taps an ear in response. “Call if anything seems suspicious, anything at all,” Vax insists. 

Vex promises, and they all go their separate ways. She turns on her monitor and tells Keyleth, monitoring from home, to keep an eye on the CCTV monitors along the streets to look for any signs of the SIS. “Well,” she mutters, a block away from the Shade, “any signs other than the obvious guy at the cafe across the street from me right now.” This man is positioned for pure intimidation - they know Percy’s at the Shade, clearly, or they have a good idea. That’s going to make getting out slightly harder. “SIS has eyes on the entrance, all,” she says, turning to look in a shop window. “This one’s obvious, which probably means there are less obvious watchers at the other doors.”

“On it,” Vax replies. Vex continues on towards the club. The man across the street doesn’t show any sign of recognizing her - he shouldn’t, not as a rival agent, anyway. There’s a possibility they have photos of her as Percy’s grad student girlfriend, though. There’s no way to know for sure. The only thing she can do is move forward, and trust her family to get them out alive.

She travels the last block and slips inside the nondescript door. The foyer is manned by a woman Vex is sure was here the last time she visited. “Hello, what’s the name on your reservation?” she asks Vex pleasantly. Vex gives the alias she’s traveling under, and the woman points her inside. Here is where Vex’s carefully considered plan ends - Percy is probably in here somewhere. She has no idea where, though, so the best idea is probably to make herself visible, and hope he spots her. With that in mind, she heads down the corridor to the more public part of the club.

As usual, she appreciates the soundproofing in this building - she doesn’t hear the thump-thump of the music until she’s nearly on top of the room boasting the small dance floor. And as usual, the dance floor is filled with bodies in various states of undress, writhing as one to the sensual beats coming over the loudspeaker. She’s tempted to stay here for a bit, but it’s hard to pick out any one person in this crowd. So she makes her way farther down the hall, then up the stairs, where the more explicit performance spaces are.

The small stages in this area are booked by reservation, by any couple or group with an exhibitionistic streak. As Vex wanders past several scenes, she remembers her time on one of these stages, bound in rope, clamps pinching her nipples, her mouth full of …she shakes herself to dispel the image. This is not a pleasure trip, and certainly not a moment to let herself get pulled down into the sub headspace. So she takes a deep breath and wanders the crowd until she finds the stage she’s looking for. The woman in charge of the scene has dark skin and snow-white hair, but the two men under her whip are unfamiliar to Vex. She only has to wonder for a moment, before she feels someone step up behind her. “Some people pay Zahra money to step on them. She’s happy to do it, and I get to be smug that I get it for free. We all win.” 

Vex turns her head to look at Kash, who is far more clothed than she’s used to seeing him here. When she says so, he just raises an eyebrow. “To be fair, so are you.” 

“Point.” Vex tries not to vibrate from nerves. The speed with which he spotted her means Kash has been on the lookout for her - which means … “Do we have a room reserved tonight?” she asks him.

“It’s busy, we’re still waiting. You should probably go downstairs and dance for a bit until our turn comes up.” 

Vex looks at him for a moment. He’s not a professional - he and Zahra are normal people, or as normal as people who frequent a sex club can be. They’re not spies. They probably shouldn’t even know about her world, but they’d been sucked into things the last time she and Percy visited. And now they’ve put Kash and Zahra in serious danger. “Kash, I -”

“Shut up. I can see it in your eyes, and I’ve had that conversation more than once over the last 24 hours. I’m getting sick of it. Just go dance, will you?”

Vex gives him a small smile, and a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you, darling.”

“Yeah, well.” He just pokes her in the side before walking away. She watches him settle down on a bench near the stage to watch Zahra. On another day, she’d do the same - she’s felt Zahra wield a whip first-hand, and knows how divine it is. But she’s apparently got someone waiting for her down on the dance floor.

Downstairs, she joins the dance floor crowd and lets herself get lost in the music. Those who belong here stick to a very particular code; her collar will keep anyone from touching her, except the one person she’s looking for. So she closes her eyes and dances, losing track of time until she feels hands on her hips. A long, lean body presses against her back. “I’ll be honest,” Percy says in her ear, “I don’t know if I was hoping you’d come, or hoping you wouldn’t.”

“You knew I would,” she says, just loud enough to be heard over the music. She can feel her muscles relaxing into him, some of her tension draining from her. He’s here. He’s alive. They can deal with whatever else comes. 

Vex turns in his embrace - it takes all her acting skills to not do a double take at his appearance. His usually white hair is now colored a dull brown, and he’s clearly wearing contacts in place of his glasses. Underneath his eyes, she can see the deep shadows of his recent issues. He looks like he’s lost weight, and there’s not a lot of weight on his bones to be lost on a normal day. “Percy,” she murmurs, putting a hand on his chest.

He shakes his head. “Not here. We have a room.” But he pauses for a moment, runs a finger over her collar, before closing his eyes and sighing. “Come on.” 

He leads her through a circuitous route, down several halls, up the stairs, back through the stage area, before finally reaching a door she hasn’t seen before. It leads to a tiny service staircase, at the bottom of which is a very small room outfitted with a cot and a plain wooden table. “It was a storage closet until I got here,” Percy says when he closes the door. “Zahra got the cot from upstairs, apparently some of the employees use it when they don’t want to go home between shifts.”

The last words are barely out of his mouth before Vex has her arms flung around his neck. “Percy! Fuck, I’ve been worried sick.”

His arms come around her, and he holds her tightly enough that she has a temporary struggle to breathe. “Vex.” He doesn’t say anything more, just holds onto her for a long, silent moment. She can feel him trembling against her.

“What happened?” she asks softly, into his shoulder.

“It’s … a long story.” Percy pulls back, and once again runs his finger over the edge of her collar. “You wore …”

Vex captures his hand in hers, holding it tightly. “Yours, remember? That wasn’t just a word.” He just stares at her, as if she’s a mirage that will disappear when he blinks. So she squeezes his hand before dropping it to activate her earpiece. “Objective obtained. How are the exits?” 

“Hold please,” she hears her brother say breathlessly. A long few seconds later, Vax’s voice comes again. “Alley exit is secure. We probably have less than ten minutes before they realize their man is missing. Move your asses.”

“Your team came for me,” Percy says slowly. “Your team, none of whom have ever met me.”

“Well, Keyleth has. Not in person, but you know …” 

“Keyleth would be Minxie, then?”

“Yeah. She’s looking forward to meeting you.”

“But the rest of them …”

Vex reaches up and kisses him to forestall the rest of the sentence. “You’re mine,” she whispers. “That’s enough.”

The look on his face is heartbreaking. Vex kisses him again, then tugs on his arm. “Come on. Grab what you need and let’s go.” As he’s shoving things into his backpack, she has a thought. “Zahra and Kash?”

“Insist they’ll be fine. This place apparently has “deep ties to powerful people” - I’m honestly not sure if they mean gangsters or J’mon Sa Ord, and they’re not saying. But they seem to think they have nothing to worry about from the SIS.”

Vex frowns, but there’s no time to go convince their friends otherwise. “I’ll have Keyleth check in on them after we’re gone.”

“I’ve got a program in the computer system that will wipe out all mention of any of our aliases as soon as we’re gone and I get access to a phone. And one on their phones that will alert me if one of them opens a fake app, in case of emergencies.” 

“So they’re as safe as we can make them.” Vex nods, as Percy slings his backpack over his shoulders. “Okay, you go first, alley door. Look for the guy who looks like me, you can’t miss him.”

“Looks like you?”

“Twin brother.” She laughs softly at his expression. “We haven’t been able to talk about a lot of our lives. That’s going to change.”

For the first time since she arrived, Vex sees Percy smile. “That’s the one good thing that’s come of this whole mess.”

She kisses him again. “Go. We won’t be traveling together, we’re recognizable together. I’ll meet you back at base.”

Vex starts to turn for the door, but Percy grabs her and kisses her long and hard before letting her go. “Thank you,” he says, leaning his forehead against hers, before he heads out of the room and down the corridor. She waits a full five minutes before following.

*

Once again, Keyleth must have booked her the slowest flights imaginable on her return trip, because everyone else beats Vex home - including Percy. It’s three in the morning, two days later, when she stumbles through the door. Keyleth is still up, staring at computers in the command center. “Hey,” she greets Vex, waving a mug of tea in her direction. “We set him up in your bedroom, figured that was okay.”

“Yep.” She would have insisted he move, if they hadn’t. “Any trouble?”

“Grog got shadowed through the Wildmount airport, and security detained Pike for a suspiciously long time in Emon. But looks like we confused the SIS enough that they didn’t catch any of Percy’s flights.” 

“Good.” Vex starts up the stairs, but stops near the bottom and calls back, “Thanks, Keyleth.”

“No problem!”

Percy is sitting in bed, a laptop open in front of him, when Vex walks in. He immediately closes the computer when she appears. “You made it.”

“So did you.” She drops her backpack at the foot of the bed and immediately begins shedding her travel clothes. He watches her with the same shadows under his eyes she’d seen back at the club. “Have you slept at all?”

Percy shrugs. “An hour here and there, since this all started. That’s about it.”

Vex strips down to her underwear, then grabs a camisole to put on with it. She crawls across the bed until she’s straddling his lap; then they’re embracing each other in a tight hug, and she loses track of time for a few minutes. Percy is warm and solid against her - he’s here, he’s alive, they made it. “You’re safe,” she breathes into his hair - which has already started fading into a lighter brown. 

She feels him take a deep breath. “Yeah.” Then he pulls back. “For now. But you all are in danger now.”

“We’re always in danger. The Chroma Conclave is already gunning for us, what’s one more organization?” She puts her hands on his cheeks. “And if you say one word about how we shouldn’t have done it, I will punch you in the face.”

He grabs one of her hands and presses a kiss to the palm. “Your brother made the exact same threat. You’re frighteningly similar in some ways.” Then he blinks, raising his free hand and running a finger along the collar she’s still wearing. “This …”

“I couldn’t bring myself to take it off,” she confesses. “It was comforting, when I didn’t know where you were or if you’d made it back here in one piece.” She’d gotten some looks for it, but sitting in an airport under a communications blackout, she’d been able to close her eyes and concentrate on the feeling of the leather against her skin, and simply breathe. As long as the collar was there, he was there. It was enough to get her home.

Percy’s expression holds something like awe as he slips his fingers underneath the collar, finding the buckle at the back of her neck. “Let’s take this off,” he murmurs. “I’m not - I need -” He unfastens the collar and pulls it away from her skin. She watches silently as he turns it over in his hands. “This means … a lot.”

“I know.” She puts a hand on his chest, over his heart. “It does.”

“Right now, though ….” With deliberate, slow movements, Percy reaches over and sets the collar on the bedside table. “Just you and me.”

“Just you and me,” Vex echoes. He’s trembling a bit, and he brings a hand up to trace the lines the collar has left on her skin after several days of wear. She’s exhausted, and he looks the same, but her blood heats all the same when he leans over and kisses her neck softly. “I’ve missed you,” she whispers.

With those words, all the energy seems to leave his body. He buries his face in her neck and slumps forward, letting his arms wrap around her middle. They sit like that for a very long time, until Vex is almost convinced he’s fallen asleep sitting up - she’s certainly close to doing so herself. But just as she’s readying herself to move, his lips move against her skin. She can barely hear the word he says, but she’s pretty sure it’s _yours_. The thought, and the sensation of his lips on her skin makes her smile.

“Sleep,” she says, resting her cheek against his hair. “Tomorrow, we can talk about the serious stuff.”

“Yeah.” It’s more of a sigh than a word, a breath against her skin.

There’s a lot to talk about. A lot she needs to understand about what’s happened to him, a lot he needs to know about life with Vox Machina. But they’ve given themselves that time. For now, all she needs to do is maneuver them to lay down and tangle their limbs with one another. And for the first time in many, many days, she feels her body give in to sleep without a fight.


End file.
